The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

‘Designing Women Live’ stars mostly men

Onstage Atlanta pays homage to popular Atlanta-based sitcom.

- By Jill Vejnoska jvejnoska@ajc.com

Apologies aside to Coca-Cola and the Braves, there was a time not long ago when Sugarbaker­s arguably was Atlanta’s best-loved institutio­n. What’s that, it wasn’t real? Try telling that to several generation­s of devoted fans of “Designing Women,” the sassy, serpent-tongued, Atlanta-set sitcom about four female best friends who worked together (but, c’mon, not very hard) at Sugarbaker­s & Associates interior design firm. For seven seasons on CBS starting in 1986, each episode averaged nearly 15 million viewers; from Lifetime to TVLand to Go to myAJC.com/living to read more on busy actor and playwright Topher Payne, including a look at the work that brought him the prestigiou­s 2014 M. Elizabeth Osborn New Play Award. Logo, it’s been rerunning on cable almost ever since.

No wonder “Designing Women Live” almost always sells out — in a good way — at Onstage Atlanta. Starting tonight, the Decatur theater company is back with two supersized weekends’ worth of its wildly popular, almost word-for-word performanc­e of classic episodes.

A couple of good-to-knows for anyone going: The first episode, “Julia’s Son,” comes

‘Designing’

from season one, while the second is a mashup of two different episodes (“Miss Trial” and “Foreign Affairs” ) from later seasons, so some minor tweaking’s occurred.

And, as always, the four women are played by men. But for the first time in nine go-rounds of “DWL,” the character of Sugarbaker­s’ only male employee, Anthony Bouvier, will be played by a

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States